An Eastside slideshow

One of the reasons I love my job is that, on occassion, I’m allowed (and paid) to indulge my love of old buildings around Seattle. I get to look up and down www.historylink.org and search for that one piece of information that will make a permit complete and then I get distracted and end up looking at things that interest me purely on a personal level.

Backstory: My family used to live in a house out in Newcastle. The house itself was a horrible McMansion but it overlooked an old protected farm/homestead and was really close to the Coal Creek mine shafts. It was boggy, wet land with ferns and bugs and gorgeous trees that I could hear rustling while laying my bed at night. Well, while looking for the architect for various buildings on Capitol Hill, I ended up looking up the old Rainier Cold Storage building and then somehow ended up looking at a slide show and interview about the area I lived in from the perspective a man that lived there his whole life. This is the stuff I live for!

Quote: “My brother was a year and half older than I was, and like I said I was born in 1920, so he was born in 1918.” This photograph was taken on the day that World War I ended. On the other side of this photo, Effie wrote, “November 7, 1918, danced, sang, rejoiced” She holds her newborn son Alan.